


rewrite an ending or two

by lco123



Category: Pretty Little Liars
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-17
Updated: 2016-03-17
Packaged: 2018-05-27 05:48:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6272266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lco123/pseuds/lco123
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Post 6x20.  Emily will do whatever she can to bring Ali home.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rewrite an ending or two

**Author's Note:**

> I'll get back to "pack up all my cares and woe" soon, but wanted to write a little Emison coda to 6x20. Definitely spoilers for the finale. Also, the theory about Rollins presented here is not necessarily what I actually believe, but I like it for this story. Title from "She Used to Be Mine" by Sara Bareilles (which is a great song for Ali in season 6).

They find Hanna a few miles outside of Rosewood, bruised, unconscious and needing to go to the hospital, but very much alive.  Emily cries and Caleb does too, but he pretends not to.  Spencer looks like _she_ might cry when she sees the way Caleb looks at Hanna.  In the hubbub Emily nearly forgets to tell anyone about Alison, until later in the evening when Aria asks how Ali is.  “I can’t believe how much that woman looked like Mrs. D,” Aria says, and suddenly it clicks.

“Someone’s messing with Ali,” Emily says, and Aria gives her a _duh_ look, because someone is messing with all of them.  “No, Aria, someone is trying to make Ali think she’s crazy.”

“And that someone is Mrs. D’s doppelgänger,” Aria pieces together, snapping her fingers.  They’re seated in Aria’s car, both too wired to go back into the loft, which is sure to feel bizarre without Hanna’s presence.  Aria looks around, as though the not-Mrs. D might be lurking right outside.  For all Emily knows, she could be.  “So what are we saying: that Mrs. D. isn’t really dead and is seeking revenge for her daughter’s murder?  We all saw her body, Em.”

Emily is so tired of puzzles, but years of putting them together have made her something of a master.  “Or maybe she had a twin.  You know what Spencer would say: it’s all connected to Radley.”

Aria narrows her eyes.  “That file she and Toby found?  You think there’s a connection?”

Emily shrugs.  “It’s as good a lead as anything.  But one thing’s for sure: if whoever is doing this wants Ali locked away, then they need her incapacitated.  We have to get her out.”

Aria nods.  “We need to talk to Elliot.”  She starts the car without another word, and they drive off in search of answers.

 

“Alison has a strong sense of herself.  If she believes she needs psychiatric help, far be it for any of us to get in the way of that.”  Elliot says it with a straight face, looking completely unbothered.  Not for the first time, Emily wants to smack him.

“I thought you would be more concerned,” she replies as evenly as possible.  “When you left town she was fine, and when you come home, she’s voluntarily committed herself.  Isn’t that a little strange to you?”  Emily shoots Aria a look and Aria widens her eyes in disbelief.

Elliot crosses his arms.  He’s invited them inside but has managed to make them feel like extremely unwelcome guests.  The three of them are crowded in the foyer, Emily and Aria practically backed against the front door.  “I’d hardly call her fine,” Elliot says with a bit of bravado.  “She was recovering from a concussion and on some pretty intense medications.  Her mind wasn’t in the right place.”

“But you’re saying she was in the right mindset when she made the decision to commit herself?” Aria jumps in, and Emily wants to mentally high-five her.

Instead, she focuses her attention back on Elliot.  “Ali wasn’t taking the meds by the time she was having the latest visions.  And her doctor gave her the all-clear on the concussion,” Emily points on.  She isn’t sure what she’s poking at, just knows that something isn’t right.  And maybe it’s for the wrong reasons that she pushes—reasons tangled up in the way her heart sped up when Ali said, “Love you”—but right now, Emily doesn’t care.  All she cares about is Ali’s safety.

“But she still ended up at the church where her sister died.  She was distraught,” Elliot counters.  It’s infuriating, the way he keeps twisting things around, making them sound ridiculous for being concerned with their friend and—

“How did you know about the church?” Aria cuts in, and in that moment Emily’s blood turns to ice.

Elliot blinks one too many times.  “Ali must have told me.”

Emily shakes her head, her body overcome with adrenaline.  “No, she didn’t.  You were on a plane.  She couldn’t get in touch with you so she asked me to fill you in.”  She pauses, giving him a look that she’s pretty sure Tanner would be proud of.  “No one told you that part.”

Aria steps forward, nearly chest to chest with Elliot.  It’s almost comical because of how short she is, except there’s nothing funny about this moment.  “You weren’t really on a plane, were you?” Aria accuses.

Elliot fixes them with a cold stare.  “I think you two better leave.”  He opens the door and practically shoos them outside, but not before calling behind them, “Alison isn’t the only one with an overactive imagination.”

 

Emily’s still shaking by the time they get to the Brew.  Aria keeps starting straight ahead dazedly.  They order their coffees—decaf, although it doesn’t matter; they’ll be up all night anyway—and find a quiet corner to debrief.

Emily keeps glancing over at Aria, wanting her to say something, but Aria remains silent.  Finally Emily can’t take it, and murmurs, “I need some objectivity.  He’s definitely bad news, right?”  It’s a thought she’s been tossing over pretty much since she met Elliot, not letting herself be the first to denounce him, despite the strange feeling he gave her. 

Aria finally whips around to look at her.  “Oh yeah, he’s the worst news,” she replies, voice thick with emotion.  “I can’t believe I _married_ them.”  Emily reaches forward and takes Aria’s hand in her own, relieved to find that Aria is trembling a little herself.

Emily sighs.  “So what’s our next move?” she asks, trying to keep her focus forward.  “He’s not going to make it easy for us to see Ali.”

Aria shakes her head.  “No, he’s not,” she agrees.  “You’re right, Em.  There’s a reason he wants her in that place, and it’s not because she’s seeing ghosts.”

“You think he’s in on it?  That he’s…” she can’t bring herself to say it, but Aria can.

“That he’s the new A.”

They’ve had versions of this conversations for years, accusing boyfriends, girlfriends, close relatives and distant strangers of being A, of being their anonymous tormenter.  It somehow still holds a tremendous weight.  Emily feels nauseous at the suggestion even being verbalized, despite the fact that she’d already reached a similar conclusion.

“We need Spencer,” Emily says slowly.  Aria nods in reply.

Spencer has clearly been crying by the time she arrives, but when Emily tries to ask her about it she immediately changes the subject to Ali.  Emily can take a hint, and fills her in on their interaction with Elliot.  

“He’s hiding something,” Spencer surmises, voice just a touch raw.  

“Well, we know that,” Aria says.  “Now what do we do about it?”

Spencer leans against the side of the table and puts a hand to her forehead.  She looks incredibly weary, and Emily feels a strong pang for her friend.  She doesn’t know what’s going on with Hanna and Caleb—it could be nothing, though she seriously doubts that—but she knows that Spencer doesn’t deserve whatever heartache seems to be headed her way.  

“We need to get to Ali as quick as possible, before he has a chance to put her on lockdown.  The longer she stays in there the harder it’s going to be for her to realize she doesn’t belong there.”  Spencer glances down as she speaks, and Emily flashes back to the time when they thought Toby was dead, when Spencer seemed like more of a corpse than a person.  She shudders at the memory.

Aria glances between them.  “I’ll drive,” she offers, and they gather themselves to leave.

The drive is mostly silent.  Each of them seems to be existing in their own private clouds of anxiety, ones related but not quite touching.  When they finally arrive at the sanitarium, Emily has to steal herself for a second, taking a few deep, labored breaths.  “You were just here a few hours ago,” Aria reminds her with a squeeze to the hand.  Emily nods and they enter the building.

“Alison DiLaurentis,” Spencer says calmly when the nurse asks who they’re here to see.

The woman regards them coldly.  “I don’t have anyone here under that name.”

Emily grimaces, then says as warmly as possible, “We mean Alison Rollins.”

Another brief scan of her paperwork, and the woman announces, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Rollins is not able to accept visitors at this time.”

A chill passes between Emily, Aria and Spencer.  “Not able to accept visitors, or not able to accept us?” Spencer clarifies, tone a bit more flinty.

The nurse purses her lips.  “I’m not at liberty to say.  If you have questions you can take it up with her doctor.”

“And who might that be?” Aria asks.

The nurse checks her notes again.  “Dr. Elliot Rollins.”

 

Three days later Spencer finally cracks the case.

Hanna is doing better and is home from the hospital.  Spencer is apparently not speaking with Hanna or Caleb, a fact which deeply pains Emily but which Spencer refuses to talk about.  Emily feels a little like a child of divorce, shuffling between the two of them and pointedly not discussing the awkwardness.

Spencer has recommitted herself to the mystery, in typical Spencer fashion, pouring over every document she can find and re-reading the Radley file like it holds the secrets of the universe.  She and Emily are seated in the barn, papers spread out on the floor between them, when Spencer unleashes her latest theory.  “So, supposing fake Mrs. D has a reason for gas-lighting Ali, and Rollins wants her locked away as well, they’re probably working together, right?”

Emily puzzles that through in her mind and nods.  “Okay,” Spencer continues.  “Here’s what I think.  Jason sent me some paperwork from the Carissimi Group, and one set of initials kept popping up: M.D.”

“Mary Drake?” Emily asks.

Spencer grins.  “Bingo.  Then I started thinking: if Mary Drake and fake Mrs. D are the same person, then I should look for other initials used in conjunction with M.D.  That would be our ticket to figuring out the truth about Elliot.”

“Assuming Elliot’s using a fake name,” Emily says.  “But if he is, he faked it well.”  She gestures to the paperwork to her left: the documents they were able to find seemingly legitimizing Elliot’s identity.

“Sure,” Spencer says.  “But there was another set of initials used along with M.D.: K.P.  I asked Jason if he knew of any K.P. in the system, and he said there were only two: Kevin Potter, who’s nearly ninety years old, and Kyle Pearson, a mysterious new British stockbroker who happens to have his medical license.”  She reaches for something behind her, and procures a photograph of Elliot.  With a barely concealed grin, Spencer announces, “Meet Kyle Pearson.”

Emily’s eyes go wide.  “Oh my god, you did it.”

Spencer shrugs, but she looks pretty pleased with herself.  “Yeah, well, my detective skills never really went away.  Now there’s definitely more to the story, but at the very least we can get him arrested for fraud, and certainly discredited as Ali’s doctor.”

Emily smiles and looks down.  "Hang on, Ali,” she whispers.  “We're coming for you.”

 

Elliot, or Kyle, is arrested the next day.  Emily doesn’t get to bask in the satisfaction, because she’s busy checking Ali out of the hospital.  They’ve filled her in on what they can understand, and she’s likely pieced together the rest.  After a search of what was once the DiLaurentis house, police apparently found some horrifyingly life-like masks, which explained the Wilden of it all.  Emily doesn’t want to have to tell Ali that part, but it is the whole story, and she deserves the truth.  

Whatever Ali’s thinking, she’s not verbalizing; she barely says a word the whole way home.  “Do you want to be alone?” Emily asks once they’re back at the house.  “Or we could go somewhere else.”

Ali shakes her head.  “No, I want to stay here.  Could you stay with me, please?”

Emily forces a smile.  “Of course.”  She makes them some tea and warms up leftovers for dinner.  Neither of them are hungry but it seems like the thing to do.  Ali makes a few sad attempts to pick at her food and Emily does the same.  They watch a bit of bad TV before calling it a night.

The next few days are pretty much a cycle of wash-rinse-repeat.  Ali talks a bit more, admitting to no great surprise that she wanted a family more than anything, and sobbing when she realizes how far she is from that now.

“Hey,” Emily reassures her, “You do have a family.  Me, Aria, Spence and Han.  Maybe we’ve gotten kind of separated these last few years, but we are still here for you.”

“I still don’t know what happened to Charlotte,” Ali says tearfully.  “After all this heartbreak, I still don’t have answers.”

“You’ll get them,” Emily insists, wishing she believed it.  “You will.  It just might take more time.”

Emily moves the rest of her stuff over from Lucas’s loft.  Truthfully, she’s glad to be getting away from the messiness of Hanna’s life right now, even if Ali’s life is far messier.

“Thank you, for fighting for me,” Ali says one night after dinner.  “You saved me, Em.”

Emily blushes at that, in spite of herself.  “I didn’t do it alone,” she points out.  “Aria and Spencer—we did it together.”  She turns to look at Ali.  “You were right when you said that we’re stronger together.”

“You’re the one who took me there when I asked, and you’re the one who got me out.”  Ali gestures to Emily’s spot on the couch.  “You’re the one who’s here.  We are stronger together and you didn’t do it alone, that’s true.  But you’re my—” she breaks off then.

“Your what?” Emily prompts, nearly breathless.

Ali leans back, considering.  “I don’t know,” she says quietly.  “My something.”  She pauses.  “I hope it’s okay for me to call you that.”

Emily gives her a lopsided smile.  “You didn’t call me anything.”

Ali pulls her sweater tighter around her.  “You know what I mean.  For me to call you mine.”

There are a million things Emily could say to that, but her voice feels trapped in her throat, so all she says is, “It’s okay.”

The next night Ali knocks on her door just as Emily’s getting ready for bed.  When Emily opens the door, Ali looks at her for a long, heavy moment, before pushing Emily against the back of the wall and kissing her.

It’s the kind of kiss they’ve never shared before: one that has no trace of hesitation to it.  It is a kiss of assurance.  A kiss that knows it’s been a longtime coming.  Emily kisses back like her life depends on it, like she’s a drowning woman and Ali is fresh, clean air.  But after a moment she pulls back.  “You don’t have to do this,” she murmurs against Ali’s mouth.

“What do you mean?” Ali asks with a frown.

“I mean, I wasn’t expecting this.”  Emily closes her eyes, trying to gather her thoughts even as her whole body is buzzing.  “You don’t owe me anything.”

Ali moves a hand up to caress Emily’s cheek, and Emily can’t help but lean into the touch.  “I know.  But I think this is what was always right.  Don’t you?  I just couldn’t see it.”

Emily lets out a slow, shuddering breath against Ali’s hand.  “What do you see now, Ali?”

Ali smiles.  “I see you, Em.  I see you here for me, and me here for you.  I see us together.”  She strokes her other hand along Emily’s arm.  Emily’s shaking again, but it’s for a different reason.  Ali can feel it too and gently steadies her.  “What do you think?”

Emily looks at Ali, really studies her, and for the first time sees nothing but love looking back.  She nods.  “I think I like what you see,” Emily says, and kisses Ali again with a smile.


End file.
